[It] is hard to believe that Darkness on the Edge of Town …, Bruce Springsteen's first album in almost three years, is as bad as it is….

In a certain sense, I suppose that Springsteen has succeeded. Darkness has all the earmarks of a "mature statement from a major voice." His new songs use a lean instrumentation, while his new lyrics add a tragic tint to his melodramatic romanticism. The album even opens on a reassuring note with "Badlands," a compact rerun of patented Springsteen riffs.

But by compressing all his favorite themes of frustration and hope, repression and rebellion, into one emblematic anthem like "Badlands," Springsteen unwittingly illuminates the strained seriousness and failure of imagination that mars the rest of Darkness on the Edge of Town.

In place of the effortless grace that distinguishes great rock and roll, the listener is subjected to plodding band tracks, mush-mouthed vocals...